They're Chinese: Lengxue Kuang Yan, Lie Yang Tiandao I, Liu Yi Chuanqi, Li Shi

It's not anime, but instead a live-action version of one of the best anime of 2018. There's even a second live-action season in 2021. I'd been looking forward to it. Ouch.

The premise is "schoolgirls go camping". Simple. Not much happens, but it's charming. Unfortunately, one of its two main characters is Rin Shima, a loner who loves solo camping and has to carry lots of scenes by herself. She's quiet, deadpan and introverted, with only a voice-over to tell us her thoughts.

This is beyond Haruka Fukuhara's abilities, which is disappointing since in other shows she'd impressed me. She's okay here when she's got a co-star (Oohara Yuuno) to react to, but she's empty and blah when no-one else is on-screen. Her voice-overs are okay, but her reaction shots are poor and her inner life is missing.

The Fukuhara-Yuuno scenes aren't bad and I'd have watched a show like that. Fukuhara's solo scenes, though, are a bit painful.

A little girl loves fashion and wants to buy cute clothes and accessories. That's nice for her. I didn't bother finishing the episode and it's only three minutes long.

I had it in my head that this was an idol anime. Apparently it is, underneath, in a magical fantasy way... but you'd never guess that from ep.1 and I'd been assuming that my half-remembered idea was all wrong.

Girls go to magic school, which looks fun. I'd love to study there. The episode's first half seems drama-free, with nice girls getting to know each other and some light comedy with their personalities. There's a slight mystery with Tiara being assigned to a group who are all hesitant about whether or not she'd really want to join them, but it looked like candyfloss.

Towards the end, though, the show gained some meat with some information that could end Tiara's academic life before it starts. I enjoyed the episode. Happy to keep watching.

It's traditional historical China, but with impossible jumping, magic and laughable CGI. People often look like dolls. This time, whatsisname is trying to cure his frozen dad.

It just feels generic. It's not even on the same planet as "interesting", although the giant ghost skeleton looked cool.

It's still pretty good. The story's developed beyond its obvious Aliens rip-off beginnings, but the show still has a massive hard-on for James Cameron. That's not a bad thing, though. It looks cool. I like the military hardware, vehicles, guns, industrial architecture, etc.

Most of the episode is marines vs. aliens. They drop down to make planetfall in tank/jeeps with retro-rockets, which is... okay, fair enough. They then do lots of alien-shooting, which is exciting and well done but by the end I was starting to want something more interesting. (There are also so many of these almost indestructible aliens, with superpowers like "burp blaster bolts", that I'm surprised they didn't just nuke the planet from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.)

There's also more of the gene-based eugenics racism we saw in Season 1. Some "inferiors" want the "superiors" to cure a sick girl, but this is a breach of etiquette to be rewarded with a rifle butt in the face. "Inferiors are trash by birth." "Inferiors should wait to die in their sheds."

It's not bad at all. You could do a lot worse than this.

Echo is a good-natured nobody who loves salvaging from rubbish heaps. The world is basically one big dump, or at least this bit of it is. (Echo lives in "Liverchester", which I presume is an amalgam of Liverpool and Manchester.) He's building home-made Equipment for Players.

Mu is an amnesiac Player who's found lying in the garbage by Echo.

I did actually consider watching this. Echo and Mu are likeable and the worldbuilding's moderately interesting. There was an incident ten years ago that makes Liverchester's mayor hate Players, even though they're the only people who can fight the civilisation-trashing monsters called Earless. Also, the show's music-themed. The names, the character motivations, even the cameos in the closing title sequence... it's pretty explicit.

That said, though, I get the impression that the music angle will be stronger than the plotting. When defeating the Earless at the end of the episode, it's unclear whether that was a fight or a music concert. If I were a big music buff, I'd probably be all over this show, but I get the impression that its non-music side might be a bit on the thin side. I did like the main characters, but even so I'll give this a miss.

It doesn't start that well. Ayumu and Yu see an idol performance and Yu immediately falls in love with idols, this idol, joining the school idol club, etc. She thinks listening to idol songs will raise her score in school tests. Kill her for the sake of the gene pool.

Meanwhile, Ayumu doesn't want to look childish, but then later admits that she does actually want to dress up in cute pink outfits after all.

They go chasing around their school, trying to find the idol club that it turns out is being shut down. We see some of the other club members. We also learn that the world transforms when you sing and dance. (The first time, it's a lava inferno. The second time, it's a sweet pink Alice sort of thing.)

I wouldn't have bothered if this weren't Love Live, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Everyone seems nice. The school council president who's obviously SPOILER clearly has issues that we'll be exploring. Ayumu does a cute wiggle at the start of her song. There's certainly nothing wrong with the episode.